Dead Emma
by Meresger
Summary: The Underworld is least fun for those who arrive thinking they're supposed to be on a fast-pass to Heaven. Join Emma in her first day in Hell as she gets schooled in what a horrible person she became by the dead she did nothing to help/inadvertently screwed over. (Ignore the order in which this site insists on listing characters; this is not a shipping story) (rated M for language)


**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **Title: Dead Emma**

 **Disclaimer: I would never claim to own the flaming toxic garbage dump that is** _ **Once Upon A TIme**_ **. That sexist, racist, homophobic, Trumpian excuse for feminism shitshow that's a disgraceful mirror of the deplorable times we live in is the demented brainchild of Adam Horowitz, increasingly obese creepy photo-bomber of cast parties continually pranked by Final Draft screenwriting software for thinking he can write scripts, and Edward Kitsis, closeted weirdo who probably gets inspiration kissing the life-sized Hook he keeps in his office.**

 **Summary: The Underworld is least fun for those who arrive thinking they're supposed to be on a fast-pass to Heaven. (rated M for language.)**

 **Genre: Is emotional character abuse porn a thing? I just felt like doing some bashing of that pirate skank and this came out.**

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 **DEAD EMMA**

Pain and screaming gave way to muffled, panicked voices as the bright lights of the hospital room faded out, replaced by darkness. Emma drifted in the dark place and a state of hazy confusion, tethered like a buoy in a rough sea for either an eternity or a moment. And then the metaphysical line that connected her soul to her body snapped and she sunk, smothered, suffocated-

Until she sat up, gasping for breath that didn't come yet she did not pass out. Instead, Emma sat up in the middle of a street and shouted in surprise as a car, barreling toward her, hit the brakes and came to a stop inches from running her down.

Emma knew the car and the driver, Cruella deVil got out, festooned in her Dalmatian fur coat and clutching a black folder in her gloved hands, looking _particularly_ _cruel_ backlight against a red sky.

 _I'm dead,_ Emma realized just before Cruella reached her and looked down at with a smirk.

"Well, well, _Mrs. Jones_. Right on time. I hope your few years of 'happiness' were worth the eternity of suffering that awaits."

Emma blinked at her, confused. This was The Underworld, obviously, but... "There's obviously some mistake. I'm The Savior. And Killian will-"

"Not be coming for you, darling," Cruella laughed. "Your family, including your awful husband, drank some serious stupid Kool Aid and think you were a wonderful, pure of heart little angel who went straight to The Good Place. You thought you would too, I bet. You were once, good enough, anyway. Alas, then you fell for the pirate and corrupted your soul..."

Shaking her head,, Cruella continued, "The best part of it all? Zeus only sent your man back as a test to see just how worthy either of you were. Clearly, not remotely, either of you. What _fun_ -for me, anyway-to utterly corrupt a savior and get to watch her eternal misery here. I mean, honestly, darling, sending a murderer-rapist back to the land of the living was hardly some testament to how much your lover had changed. It was really a testament to what a pathetic, thirsty skank you are who threw herself under a man to get over and ignore all her life's tragedies, disappointments, and the ridiculous situation of fairytales and parents who were younger and better looking than you...

"Increasingly better looking I might add, darling. You look like an anorexic crack whore.

"And I don't even know what's going on with your clothes," Cruella scoffed while Emma looked down at what she was wearing, not a hospital gown but one of her floral blouses, a black leather jacket, and jeggings.

"If you were a fashion show, darling," the dead villain laughed, "it would be called 'The Hell's Angels Gang-rape Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, and Grace Kelly at a Thrift Shop.

"Your wedding is actually featured in the Hall of Low-Grade Miseries at the local Museum," she continued. "Johanna takes the kids to see it once a week. Sadly, their favorite teacher Milah can't take them because your obsessive quest to resurrect your boyfriend got her thrown into an acid bath of eternal torment. And you neither noticed nor cared that the pirate didn't even shed a tear for his first love's tragic sacrifice to save his syphilitic penis.

"Which, by the way," said Cruella with a smile as she handed over the folder, "played a role in your own tragic demise. You really should have used a condom. And not gotten pregnant. You certainly shouldn't have used a fertility potion."

"I... what? I didn't-"

"Oh, that's right," Cruella smirked, "your dear, sweet husband dosed you with one without your consent because your relationship is based on the trust and honesty of secrets and lies for each other's own good. Problem is, he didn't hold up his end of the deal to leave you... which, actually, was the deal he made with Zeus to get his life back, because he was having a terribly toxic influence on you. But selfish prick that he is, he was sure he could outwit the price of magic with the true love he believed you shared, that it could purify his heart and make him deserving of Emma Swan and you'd both be perfect little happy idiots like your parents... despite all the evidence that Hades was a masterful con-artist who played you all every step of the way and used to his advantage your heart being conceived out of true love. Too bad that doesn't guarantee you a fee pass to The Good Place. Not when you sufficiently darken it being a selfish skank of your own free will.

"So, you see," grinned Cruella, "even if Killykins thought you were here, he couldn't bring you back. Your death is the price for his life, because he couldn't let you go to live yours, to regain your true power that Zelena had taken from you with his kiss-being a strong, independent, competent law enforcement officer, woman and mother instead of a corrupt, skanky deadbeat who'd have ended up in a drawer in the morgue a lot sooner if this was an episode of a _Law & Order_ instead of whatever farce you call all your increasingly hokey magical realms and the less dilapidated version of this town where you're actually considered a hero these days," she rolled her eyes and scoffed.

"You could have gotten all your sweet savior-ness back, you know, and gotten a fast-pass to the happy land of the dead," sighed Cruella, "but instead you passed Hades' test and failed his brother's-the one that really counts, after all-and chose a warm bed in your little codependent dance of fake happiness."

She clicked her tongue and concluded, "There's a difference between mercy and grace, darling, and the gods also aren't keen on those who dispense them without knowing the difference. So when your little Killypoo doubled down on a love that was never real, he secured the death certificate of his MILF fetish wife and quasi-incestuous offspring. You might want to do something about that blood. There are terribly nonabsorbent maxi pads in the diner bathroom."

She tossed a quarter onto the pavement along with the file. "Your crimes, your punishment. And your proof of employment-slash-punishment and sorry excuse for a residence. Have a horribly miserable afterlife, darling! It's been fun!"

It only just began to sink in the absurd reality of this all and how it had happened. The haziness cleared to Emma's most recent memories of going into labor, being rushed to the hospital, and all of it happening much faster than she'd expected, the pain worse than she'd anticipated. The crotch of her jeans was now stained with blood and she quickly pulled over her jacket and wrapped it around her waist before pulling herself up and hurrying into the diner that looked like a broken-down Granny's with the worst feeling of deja vu.

Emma headed past the blur of customers for the bathroom, which she hadn't used before and was a filthy mess, out of the worst bus station and rest stop nightmares. The maxi pad dispenser took her quarter and provided a flimsy little pad that wouldn't even work for a regular menstrual cycle.

Fighting tears of confusion and shock, Emma shoved as much scratchy toilet paper in her underwear as she could and then exited the smelly restroom-

Where she was met by that Blind Witch bitch who sneered and laughed loudly, "HEY, EVERYONE, THE SAVIOR'S BACK! LEGIT DEAD THIS TIME! CHIILDBIRTH! PAY-UP, DIPSHITS!"

People groaned and pulled out money, grumbling about other ways they'd thought Emma would die.

"You had a death pool on me?" Emma balked.

"On all you all," the witch snorted. "I was the first to put you down for surrendering your kick-ass independence and becoming a broodmare for the pirate. Of course, most didn't think you'd succeed in getting him out. Not that you did. Sweet trick Zeus pulled on your dumbass, huh? All saviors are tested. Most of 'em _do_ fail. That nippleless orphan from Agrabah got stuck in a cave for decades and turned into a genie. You died. Turns out that selfish surrending your savior responsibilities is less awful than using them to be a legit terrible person while telling yourself that your shit don't stink!"

An older woman handed the witch her money and told Emma with a glower, "You're an embarrassment! It was hard enough fighting for even something less than equality back home, but a woman raised in a better world, who was supposed to save us all giving up everything that made you special to gestate for the worst cliche bad boy stalker love interest of them all and end up dying in childbirth like most of his whores and rape victims over the past three centuries..."

"Many of whom will not be particularly happy to meet you, I might add," grinned the witch, taking the woman's money"

"Just sad," the old woman shook her head. "Waist of potential and magic for sure. But at least some poor soul was spared getting caught up in your miserable family! That kid dodged a bullet!"

Emma clutched her folder. "I'd really just like to go."

"You think there's free restroom privileges here? Sit. Eat."

"But... I need to find the pharmacy-"

"Like you're the first lady to walk in here and bleed all over the place," the witch rolled her eyes. "Why do you think the booths are red? The Enchanted Forest has like a seventy percent maternal mortality rate. Most of the woman here died popping out some assholes brat."

"UP TOP!" a number of women in the diner declared, high-fiving.

Sighing, Emma took a seat and immediately had a burned grilled cheese and room temperature "hot chocolate" with unappetizing curdled cream on top put in front of her.

"Oh, and we don't have cinnamon down here. Enjoy."

Emma didn't enjoy. She was dead. Her baby was dead. And no one was going to come for her. She'd apparently failed some test she didn't even know she was taking.

As she choked down the last of her charcoal and dry cheese sandwich, a teenage girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen in a waitress uniform came over.

"Finished?"

"Yeah," Emma replied, mustering a smile - only to have her own tepid chocolate drink splashed all over her top.

"Bitch!" the girl hissed. "I was _this_ close to making amends with my mother who got killed during one of your family's stupid-ass town-related disasters! And if that wasn't bad enough, you all crashed The Underworld and she got splashed with River water during one of your stupid battles with Hades to get your stupid boyfriend back! What kind of whore fucks their kid's step-grandfather who handed their baby daddy over to a child-abusing cult leader and his pedophile bestie, anyway!?

"And now my mom's stuck in eternal torment! She was a good person who should be in Elyssium or whatever shit there is that's better than this! She was only here because I was a bad person! At least I knew it! I knew I was a selfish bitch who hurt her and I never got a chance to make up for that because of you!"

The girl looked down at Emma in disgusted and directed, "Did any of you do anything to try and save the innocent people who lost the good afterlives they'd earned just because they had a layover here to finish business with shitty family and friends? No! You didn't try to save your mom's friend's girlfriend's dead aunt who was probably the nicest person to ever get stuck down here waiting for a deadbeat relative! She didn't even have to come to this place, she could have stayed in her 'good people with unfinished business' part of town, but she wanted to help people who'd fucked up actually redeem themselves.

"But what did you do? Help assholes who didn't even try! No good deed, right? You got to go back to your stupid, selfish life while she's rotting with my mom! So, fuck you and your useless savior ass that never saved anything but always took the credit cause your dumbshit parents and narcissistic boyfriend told you that were a hero! I hope you spend eternity writing parking tickets until your uterus dries up and falls out your STD-riddled pussy! And I hope your cursed son that you've been oblivious about while having your heartless replacement baby dies along with his other mommy and murderer-rapist aunt that you all consider good family and _you_ can watch as _we_ toss them all in the harbor! How'd you like that?"

"Hon," the Blind Witch came over, "take a smoke break. Dropping truth bombs on the Antii-Savior here isn't going to get you a day off and you've already got an extra shift as it is."

The girl stomped off in a huff and the witch told Emma, "You should go now. I'm keeping your tab. It better be paid the moment you get your first paycheck, bitch. Don't let the door hit your scrawny ass on the way out."

Emma looked around the diner, at all the people glaring hatefully at her. Had she really robbed them of finishing their unfinished business? She honestly hadn't thought about Auntie Em. Or Milah. Or any of the others. It all seems to so crazy. Her life was crazy. She just.. .blocked it out, didn't deal with it because it was insane, and moved on... moved in to her cliché suburban dream with the picket fence.

"I'm sorry," Emma muttered, as she got up.

No one said anything, they just kept glaring hatefully until she'd left the diner... though she realized quickly that other people on the street recognized her and blamed her for something.

As she neared the Library, she spotted a group of school children of various ages being lead by a ginger-haired woman who slowed and gave her an appraising look.

"You're Snow White's daughter."

"I... yes. Did you know her?" Emma asked, hoping for a friend.

Instead, the woman's face turned cold. "Her selfishness and stupidity got me murdered by Cora while you were in New York. She never even came to my funeral. And then you know what the bitch did? She broke into my yard, pulled out my flower garden for your wedding bouquet, and then _bought_ my house!

"Your family is horrible." the woman sneered. "I hope your mother jumps off the clock tower out of grief and guilt for pushing you into the arms of that asshole pirate to compensate for her grief and guilt at her giving you a terrible childhood and shared responsibility in getting her grandson's father killed. Which, I'm sure, she never told you. She and her dumbass Prince Charming just pretended his death was a heroic accident that they paid tribute to by making a ceremony all about them and their kid instead of fessing up that when he asked for their help to get back to you and his son they told him to fuck off and didn't even give him a horse while they showered the pirate in royal-branded supplies. Can't get passed their hatred of his father, I guess. Like you couldn't get passed him being conned by Pinocchio... yet made that whoring, gambling puppet your best friend.

"You're just like your mother," she accused as Emma shrunk back, "I bet you never visited his grave after that sad fake-ass visit your parents insisted on to look good either, did you? Gave away your necklace, your car, everything that reminds you of how you failed in life, just like Snow gave away her grandmother's tiara that her mother gave her and I was stupid enough to give back to her when I found it, thus getting me thrown off the clocktower. At least _here_ I get a commemorative plaque!"

There was, Emma realized, a brass plate on the sidewalk that read, "Here, On the Other Side, is where Johanna Jacobson passed over, murdered by Cora Mills and by proxy of Snow White's incompetence. She is survived by no one."

One of the children, a little boy, tugged at Johanna's coat and asked, "Is this the lady that got Ms. Milah thrown in the River?"

"Yes, this is her, Bobby," Johanna nodded.

The little boy scowled and stomped hard on Emma's foot.

"You're a meanie!" he accused her. "Ms. Milah was trying to be a good person! She'd almost earned her way out. She just had to make up with her son and his dad. But you got her tossed in the River! Why? To save some pirate!? That stupid pirate that didn't do anything to save any of us from Pan and his sick friends!"

All the children glared at Emma who swallowed thickly, "You... you were all prisoners in Neverland?"

"Some of us just got tormented in our dreams," said a girl of maybe twelve. "I was from the same world as Wendy and her family. We went to school together. I stopped sleeping. One day I was so tired that I walked in front of speeding carriage and got smooshed."

"Most of us," a boy of maybe eight said, "were Felix's _special_ friends. Whenever he found a new one, the old ones got thrown to the mermaids. They don't care if you're a kid or not. But, really, being ripped apart and drown by mermaids wasn't so bad compared to the stuff he made us do."

"Lots of butt stuff!" a younger boy said and everyone nodded.

An somewhat older teenage boy with an olive complexion and crazy hair that barely contained his winter cap stepped forward, glaring.

"You don't have much of a moral compass, do you lady?" he asked Emma. "Takes a real miserable sort to marry someone who's killed children _and_ their own grandfather, who handed her own kid's father over to monsters for getting a bruised ego and then blamed him for all the misery he was unknowingly agreeing to by not wanting to play fake father-son games-then apologized only for chasing the same piece off ass, like all torture and molesting, he still totally had that coming, right?

"But I know Hook," the boy sneered. "He's as a master a lying, at reeling dumb fish in like you and then you back like chum to get eaten by mermaids and sharks. Me? I was trying to defect from The Lost Boys. I'd tried to get passage on his ship for me and Baelfire. But he didn't want that. He liked his gig being ageless and getting to escape every town where he raped some barmaid to Neverland where he could lay low, a decade or two, until the poor woman had killed herself and her family had long since given up looking for justice. You think your baby's the first one that got tossed in the River of Forgetting because of that bastard? So he ran me through with his sword, made it look like he was trying to send _Pan_ a message. Get himself a longer leash."

The kid shook his head in dismay, "I don't know if you're evil or just stupid, but I'm sorry Baelfire ever met you. He deserved better than both his mother and his true love being the same pirate's whore."

As Emma stood there at a loss for words, Johanna nudged the boy's arm.

"Come along, Rufio. The museum is open."

"Do we have to see the wedding exhibit again?" a little girl of maybe five asked. "The lady with the doilie on her head gives me _nightmares_."

"This is Hell, sweetheart, of course we do. You're all orphans who were abandoned by your families when Pan came for you and your parents probably all went to a worse place than this, so there's no one to answer your phone calls and sign your no-permission slips. You have to go to the Museum. I'm sorry."

Some of them started crying. Rufio put a hand on the little girl's shoulder as the children all followed Johanna across the street into what wasn't Underbrooke's library but The Museum of Miseries.

As Emma was watching them disappear through the door, allowing herself for the first time to wonder just what horrible things Killian had done in Neverland that she'd told him she didn't want to know along with anything else in his past, a car drove past the curb, splashing her jeans with the smelly sludge from a pothole and causing her to drop her folder. At least it wasn't water, but it smelled like urin and motor oil, which wasn't great.

Sniffling herself, Emma picked her folder up and tugged her beanie down as far as it would go before avoiding any other pedestrians on her way to the Death Star Pharmacy. She found the maxi pads and some cheap sweatpants with a Jacksonville Jaguars logo on them as quickly as she could. The restroom, of course, was out of order.

"I haven't gotten my first paycheck yet," Emma told the pharmacist at the check-out, feeling more embarrassed and humiliated than when she got her first period while living on the streets and had to steal those tampons.

"Recently Deceased Voucher?"

Emma looked through her dirty folder and handed it over.

"Not having a great first day, are you?"

"Not really."

"Let me guess. Childbirth? We don't get as many as we used to what with the magical worlds population diminished. Most of them end up in different neighborhoods now. Beats having to explain the modern twist to the not-cursed ones. Hades found that fun. Ares is less hands on and Cruella hates 'medieval shit'."

"Ares?"

"Zeus tossed that Arthur idiot in the River five minutes after he set his worthless ass on Hades' thrown. Only a god can rule an immortal land. So it's Ares. Not a lot of need for war inspiring anymore. Humans of all realms are pretty good at finding stupid reasons to slaughter each other by the thousands without him having to get his hands dirty. So he's more into the psychological torture now. But don't worry," he concluded, putting her purchase in a bag. "If you haven't met him already, you're just a low-grade awful person."

"Great. Is there any way I can use your bathroom?"

"No. It's out of order for eternity. You can try the park restroom across the street. Just look out for the geese and anyone having sex in it. There are some weirdos with dirty public bathroom exhibitionist sex fetishes."

"Okay. Thanks... ah... Stealthy?" Emma read his nametag.

"I prefer 'Stan'," he said, "but I got killed saving your ungrateful mother before I could legally change it. On the bright side, there's a fake version of me living in a parallel Wish World where her ungrateful doppleganger got murdered. Don't get me started on all the nonsensical paradoxes you're responsible for, lady. I'm just glad I didn't have to participate in any of them."

Emma grimaced and her took her bag. "Have a... a not entirely crappy day, I guess."

"Never happens!"

Sighing, Emma shoved apart the malfunctioning doors... and her bag of maxi pads fell through a hole in her bag into yet another oil puddle. Did every fucking car in this place have an oil leak?

At least no one was having sex with or without geese in the public bathroom. Emma managed to clean herself up, not burst into tears, and then carried her folder to the bench by the lake. It was, of course, busted, but Emma sat down and finally flipped through the sopping papers.

She was dead. She had been convicted of "Succumbing to shallow temptations and living a selfish, hypocritical existence causing undo stress and pain to others, both living and dead" and thus "failing The Final Trial of Saviors" whatever that was. She'd been sentenced without trial to "afterlife in The Underworld without the possibility of parole" on the testimony of a lot of dead people she'd wronged who were mostly dead because of her wronging them or their families. There were pages of their testimony and additional lists of other people she was "known by the omniscient sight of the gods" to have wronged also. That list included her parents, Neal, Henry, and her second child who didn't even get a name on the list. The section read:

"Baby Jones: died at birth due to lack of heart caused by a combination of congenital syphilis and magical irony. The deceased's soul has been remitted to The River of Forgetting for immediate reincarnation with a hopefully fit mother instead of a skank who had even more selfish reasons to have another child than her mother and father who is not a serial rapist and murderer who has killed one of his/her other family members."

Whoever wrote the Death Files was clearly viciously sardonic. Emma was pretty sure that meant Cruella herself wrote them. How a serial killer had gotten a job as an Afterlife secretary, Emma had no idea..

"This sucks!" Emma complained, tossing her file into the lake. "I was just trying to make everyone happy! It was my job as a savior to get everyone's happy endings back! And now I'm being punished for it while they all think I'm in Heaven!" she cried.

"You'd be surprised," a man startled her, "how often that happens." He was older but kind looking and carrying a plastic bread bag. "Thing is, Miss, not everyone had earned those happy endings in the first place."

He sat down beside her. "You can't hand out happy endings on a silver platter to assholes who haven't earned their redemption and the right to find them _on their own_. You certainly can't brainwash yourself and sacrifice your own happiness to deliver that unearned gift and expect to reap rewards in the Afterlife."

"I didn't know I was doing that!" she complained.

"Oh, I hear you. I died thinking I was doing the right thing and that brought about my death and started a bitterness growing inside my son that turned him into a monster," he sighed. "But it is what it is. You sacrificed your destiny, all the good you could have done in the world, the best parts of yourself, so that bad people could believe they were good people without earning it. You weren't doing a savior's duties, you were just a glorified con-artist, conning yourself at your own game. And so here is where you got yourself with no easy getting out."

"How does everyone know who I am? What I've done?" Emma sputtered.

"Well, mostly it's the Museum," he said. "It was Cruella's idea and got her a work order. If you show real promise in torturing people around here, you can get some leniency granted to your sentence doing administrative work for Aries. He's less hands-on than Hades. So she's essentially Mayor since Cora was sent to Tartarus."

"Tartarus?" Emma asked, brows furrowed. "Is that some good distract like... ah... The Elyssian Fields?"

The man gave her a blank look and then groaned. "Merlin's balls, you're dim, aren't you? Did you even read that book your son read? No, why would you? A competent mother would never allow a teenage boy the power to control the first draft of history. _Of course_ it's not a good distinct, you idiot! That woman was a mass murderer who killed over a thousand people and even after being given multiple Afterlife sentences here still took the opportunity to pit her living daughters against each other. Having a last-minute 'change of heart' and hugging it out doesn't get one a pass to The Good Place any more than your mass murderer brother-in-law got sent to Pirate Heaven.

"Hades was just humorously double-crossed them," he explained, "making them think that for their loyalty they were managing to escape Hell like he'd promised them-when he never even intended to keep that promise. They were both irredeemable psychopaths. Hades enjoyed fucking with them until they weren't useful anymore to his three hundred year escape plan, then he tossed them in the torture pits they originally had reserved for them by our beneficent Three Justices and not always so beneficent Zeus.

"People call this place Hell, but it's more Hell-adjacent. Actual Hell is beyond that River you got innocent people thrown in-and not innocent people who had more fitting punishments coming and were still awaiting trials, so you robbed their victims the right to get complete their unfinished business by testifying in the Halls of Justice or facing their accusers."

"So... that's why _everyone_ here hates me?" Emma sniffled.

"Not all directly. Some just by association with other members of your family. Regina, Zelena, Hook, they killed a lot of people here, some who were trying to better themselves in life but didn't get enough done to escape this place even if they did get the chance to eventually meet the people they wrong in life and get forgiveness... or merit points for making the effort even if they weren't forgiven. Others didn't even get the chance because your family was so easily duped by Hades'."

The man shook his hand. "It took me a long time to realize my own culpability in what my son became. I felt so guilty about giving him away. It ruined my marriage. I drank. I neglected my other son. I wanted to fix that more than I thought about whether or not James had a good life, what finding out his origins would do... and what losing me might do besides. If he'd never found out he was adopted, learned of the whole sordid mess... maybe he wouldn't have grown up so embittered, so hateful and violent. And many things might have turned out different. Such as my not getting killed by a man whom my own granddaughter would later marry fully knowing what he did."

Emma sucked in a breath. "R-Robert?"

"You're not a good person, Emma Jones," he told her coldly. "I'm glad that Ruth moved on before Emma Swan committed moral suicide to become the screwed up, pathetic soul sitting before me. Your grandmother sacrificed _her life_ so you could be _conceived_. And how have you repaid that debt? Honored her? Gave up every opportunity to save your son's father, drove Henry away as soon as he was old enough to drive without mowing down pedestrians and mailboxes so that he's grown up into, frankly, a terrible person with a pathetic life and sad, counterfeit excuse for a princess wife created by your time traveling and wishes splintering the universe into a bunch of idiotic paradoxes that the gods have let run wild because it amuses them to see how just a handful of humans, _one family_ , could completely fuck up the worlds they made _and_ spread their magical diseases to worlds they didn't.

"Portals in New York City! You should be ashamed of that lecture you gave your son. Pathetic. Henry never should have tracked you down. Everyone would actually be better off still under that curse than living through the shitstorm that's rained down since you fulfilled your destiny."

Robert shook his head. "Ultimately, I blame your mother. My son didn't want to cast that spell on you before you were born. But I wasn't there to raise him up right. Boy is pussy-whipped, and not in a good way by a competent woman. Your mother's got so many concussions, her brain probably looks like one of those NFL players in your world. If Ruth had known that, I bet she would have drunk that potion and let Snow White die and maybe your soul would have ended up with a better life than some 'true love' baby nonsense.

"True love is bullshit, you know," he said. "I mean, your parents first met and sparked a 'true love sapling' nourished _by the warm corpse of a man David had just murdered_... and then that Evil Queen snapped it like the stale Slim Jims at the Death Star. It's just something Aphrodite made up to fuck with people. As the kids these days say, you got played, girl. Now you're paying the price."

"I... I'm sorry," Emma sputtered. "I thought... I thought Killian had changed. I thought he deserved a happy ending. He siad I was his happy ending..."

"And so did that shitstain prince the real Grace Kelly married," her grandfather tutted. "But I assume all you did was watch a scripted movie she was forced to make as part of a disagreeable agreement her husband made with her movie studio to get her out of her contract so she could be the good little wife he wanted, giving up all of her independence and making him some babies... which he then threatened she would never see when she tried to leave him. Perfect symbolism for your wedding day, really, if unintended."

"My mother's dress got burned and the dressmaker had it in the back," Emma uttered.

"And she absolutely needed you to get married as soon as possible to alleviate her guilt complex," Robert nodded. "Her two-faced evil bitch mother really screwed her up. I met Eva. She's around here somewhere getting what she deserves. She and Cora had quite the knockdown, drag-out fight until Ruth punched them both in the tits. I _miss_ her, you know. But she deserved better than me. She got to move on to a better place after James got tossed in the drink. Me... I've still got to make amends with David. I tried calling, but with the whole sleeping curse thing he thought I was some ghost or hallucination and instead of getting my message right, he thought it meant he should forgive your asshole boyfriend who murdered me and support you marrying that asshole!"

Robert shook his head. "I'm sure in your heart you know you did wrong, Emma, that your reasons weren't pure. I'm sure you knew every single lie your husband told you."

"I _did_ n't know he was giving me a fertility potion!"

"Well, most of them then. I mean, who do you think convinced August by threat of physical violence to give your son that motorcycle? Who found him a magic bean? Who kept besting him at swords, making him feel like a loser, while talking about the baby he was going to put in you?

"Killian Jones was never a good man, Emma. He never _changed to a bad person_. He was a psychopath from birth who had an even bigger psychopath for an older brother who kept him in check with rum, gambling, and as many skanky whores as possible to ensure the man's brain was eaten by syphilis well before he hit the pause button in Neverland.

"You sacrificed your life for that. You sacrificed _the good life your son_ could have had for that. A son who might well die pretty soon and deserve some answers for why his mother chose an alcoholic pirate over him and his father. And screwing up with your son, that one I get enough for my own failures. I failed them by being selfish and stupid, and that's the only reason I won't throw you in that lake myself."

Standing up, Robert walked a few yards down the path, then he tossed his bag of old bread at her. Emma caught in on reflex and almost smiled, thinking it was a kind gesture, until he whistled loudly-and suddenly the geese in the lake started flocking toward her.

"SHIT!" Emma gasped, watching her grandfather haul ass toward the street and a bunch of rabid waterfowl converging on her. She tried magic, but of course she was dead and dead people didn't have magic here. She didn't have her gun either, not that bullets would probably work on demon geese that hissed at her and blinked red glowing eyes...

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" Emma screamed, trying to fend off the vicious creatures. How could it hurt so much when she was dead!?

Suddenly the clock tower chimed and the geese retreated. Cruella's disembodied voice announced, "All new residents, report to your designated punishments. Time cards are included in your entry folders and must be punched in and out to record time served and not incur overtime punishment. That is all."

Emma looked toward her folder floating in the lake with the demon geese.

" _SHIT!"_

* * *

Rubbing at the bite marks on her arms, Emma trudged her way across the Town Commons to the Sheriff's Station. It had taken her an hour to fish her file out without actually touching the water. Everyone avoided her and her dripping bread bag of papers like she carried the plague.

Her file had listed her punishment as "Sheriff's Deputy". There was irony there, she supposed.

With a sigh, she pushed open the front door... and was met by the last but probably first person she should have expected there.

"You're late," Graham glowered at her and gestured to her old desk which was piled with even more paperwork than her real Sheriff's desk... because she kind of almost never did any paperwork and ended up just throwing a lot out.

"G-raham," she choked, starting to smile.

"Deputy Jones," he addressed her coolly, "you'll finish all of these reports here by noon, then you have parking ticket duty. And three nights a week, night patrol, starting tonight. Also, you _will_ wear your uniform. Are we clear?" he concluded, handing her the ugly brown uniform she'd refused to wear in life.

"I... I'm sorry," Emma gasped. "I didn't believe you about Regina taking your heart. I couldn't save you, I-"

"You think I'm angry about that?" Graham scoffed. "No. I'm angry because even though the only logical reason when you did believe was that she had murdered me after keeping me as her sex slave for three decades, you consciously made an effort _not_ to deal with that and hold her accountable. I'm _angry_ because I hired you to try and fix the Department, to put justice above Regina's selfish, cruel whims, but the moment you break the Curse for everyone else, you throw that all away. Instead, you let your incompetent father keep his 'co-sheriff' job which he used to take your mother on crime scene dates and arbitrarily uphold whatever laws he wanted at any given time, a policy which you wholeheartedly adopted. I'm _angry_ because you arrested people for interrupting _your_ dates, abused prisoners, neglected the needs of anyone who wasn't related to you or sharing your bed, and _finally_ that you made a cold-blood murderer and rapist, a worthless piece of unemployable shit a Sheriff's Deputy just so he could feel like a man _at the expense of the safety of every goddamn person in town_. And guess who's Sheriff now that you're dead?

"So put your uniform on, _Jones_ ," Graham hissed, "and sit your ass in that chair, and start doing every piece of paperwork you've let pile up since returning from your time travel vacation as some sort of body-snatched slut. Perhaps you can use some of those witness statements to solve the murders of people here who died in Storybrooke because you were too busy having sex in your car while your dipshit deputy played with the siren than answering 9-1-1 calls."

Graham returned to his office, slamming the door.

"Ahhhhhhhh!" Emma yelped as hundreds of pencils fell out of the ceiling onto her head.

"Hey, Deputy!" a slovenly man called from one of the jail cells, "A little help here? I clogged up the toilet taking a massive dump!"

"Goodman it! Why don't any toilets work right here?"

"Low flow, honey," he said. "Why do you think everyone hair looks like crap? Of course, from what I understand, your hair always looks like crap, so maybe you won't notice the difference. Sheriff said you used to have the most beautiful girls. He totally wanted to bang you. Man, you must've really let yourself go. He's got good taste. You look like you should be arresting yourself at a crack house."

"I've had a really bad first day!"

"If you say so," he shrugged, "but I've seen the Museum exhibit. You've pretty much looked increasingly like an unwashed meth-head since your time travel adventure. Gotta wonder if the past Dark One didn't hex your ass Dorian Grey style. Like maybe that husband of yours was sucking out your life-force to keep his smoulder turned up to eleven twenty-four seven. I give your early Savior self a solid eight even without the flash lashes and push-up bra. Now? Man, you're like a four that I would only due black-out drunk."

"Wow, thanks!" Emma snapped. "Like I haven't had people all morning telling me what an ugly whore I am. How original. Take your next dump in the sink!"

"Sure, Deputy! Why don't you force-feed me some Pop-Tarts first! If your husband was here, you could force me to watch you make out while he made threatening gestures at me that if I didn't my mouth shut about him beating me half to death in a jealous rage and throwing me through a public property window and thus endangering his getting to fuck you two-handed, I'd beat me the other half."

The criminal smirked. "Not sure what you were thinking for that date night. Did you really dress up like Sandra Dee and Dany Zucko? Did you put up a fight? I be he likes that. Maybe you do to.

 _"No, no. I don't want to have sex with you, Killian!"_ the guy said in falsetto.

 _"Fifty no's is a yes!"_ he answered in a British accent. _"I'm going to jab you with my sword now and by sword I mean my STD-scarred penis!"_

"Oh, Killian! Your first romantic words to me when you threatened to rape me after leaving me and my mother to starve to death! I'm so fucking horny! Tell me about how you murdered my grandfather!"

"I stabbed him in the guy and laughed and stole his jewelry!"

"Oh! Oh! I gonna cum so hard! Touch my tits with your murder trophy rings and stick your murder hook up my asshole!"

"As you wish!"

On that the man broke into peels of laughter and laid down on his mattress-less cot giving Emma two middle fingers and muttered in his own voice, "Sick slut."

* * *

Night patrol. At least it was quiet. The day had been literal-adjacent Hell. _Everyone_ hated her. People she had missed, people she had loved, people she was sorry for her actions, however indirect, dying blamed her if not for their deaths than for dishonoring their sacrifices with the choices she'd made in life. And everyone else just seemed to think she was some stupid, slutty joke for not realizing she'd end up and was doing their best to make her experience even worse... maybe to get a day off or something for community service.

It was one thing to have the grandfather she had never met sick demon geese on her. That sucked. It didn't feel good at all to have her dead first love's dead childhood friend graphically explain how the man she married had murdered him and knowingly stood by drinking rum while dozens of innocent children suffered to the point that their parents gave up on them and the ended up stuck here. And the strangers thing was pretty humiliating.

Having Graham look at her and treat her like she was the worst kind of monster was the worst, though. She'd known him, respected him, even had started to fall in love with him. After Cleo, he was the first person to believe she could do something-other than break a curse because a book said so-and gave her the chance to prove it. She'd been pissed when he kissed her-it was way out of line-and then sorry she'd been pissed when she realized Regina had some kind of sick hold him and that she kind of had wanted to kiss him too. Then she was incensed when she realized it was all true and had envisioned strangling Regina in the hospital supply closet. But events hadn't made time for that, then time passed when she ended up taking a six week camping trip to The Enchanted Forest, and then a side-trip to New York City...

"HEY!" Emma shouted out the window as she spotted some kids trying to jimmy the padlock on the ally door of the Purbeck Shoes building replica that seemed to be a sweatshop for sports memorabilia that went directly in the Death Star's discount bin with the old Valentine's Day teddy bears and St. Patrick's day napkins.

"THE FUZ!" they shrieked and ran for it.

Jumping out of the car, Emma gave chase, but didn't make it far. Even with the red haze in the night sky the ally was dark and filled with trash she hadn't noticed, causing her to trip and fall into bags of trash and cardboard boxes, twisting her ankle in the process.

A muffled voice swore under the pile. "What the fuck!? My house!"

Emma groaned. Great. She'd landed on some hobo encampment. Could this day get any worse?

"I'm sorry. Police business," she apologized, pulling at the crumpled cardboard while the person beneath pushed away bags and newspaper. "I was chasing some kids and-"

"Fuck," said the person as her breath caught. "Emma?"

Emma swallowed and her voice waved. "N-Neal?"

"Christ," he said, getting up, "you look like shit. Like, seriously. I thought you had another kid, but you still look like a malnurished heroine junkie. What'd you do, sacrifice yoruself for Hook or did his beautiful love for you finally end up with him killing you some jealous, boozing fight?"

"I..." Emma squeaked out. "You... we talked, didn't we? Did I hallucinate that? I thought... you were in a better place? A good place?"

"That looks like a theme park shut down because some people got thrown off the roller coaster and the clown from It killed some kids in the hall of mirrors?" Neal snorted. "Yeah, seems a legit conclusion."

He handed over the badge that fallen off her belt. "Graham not clue you in that Hades locked us all up more securely than Hook before intentionally letting him escape to con you? Jesus, Emma. I thought you'd learned better how to spot when you were being used. But then I always thought your superpower was complete bullshit. I finally got tired of watching you swallow every one of Hook's lies along with his syphilitic cum and broke my old man's crystal ball."

"You... you watched me?" she sputtered.

"Yeah, well, so did he. Like stalked you for weeks with his spyglass and you thought that was hot, so don't doing that hypocritical judgey princess thing your mother does that you started doing. I was just looking in on you and Henry. I wanted to make sure you were able to keep your promise to find Tallahassee. To make sure Henry didn't grow up like we did. I knew it'd be hard..."

Neal scoffed and ran a hand over his face. "But I thought you'd at least _try_. I mean, fuck, Emma! You didn't find Tallahassee, you settled for like some shithole, black-mold infested, chalk-outlines-on-the-floor part of Baltimore life equivalent. And Henry grew up worse than we did, cause he had his mother right there the whole time _completely ignoring him to fuck his step-grandfather._ And then you sent him off twice with a hug and approval so you could go home and follow your misogynist prick husband's orders to lay on your back for baby-making like the brainless little Stepford Wife you became.

"I _hate_ that I was in love with you," Neal told her angrily. "I _hate_ that I still love the person I knew and had to watch her turn into someone I don't recognize, someone I _would_ have called the cops on and _never_ sacrificed my life trying to get back to.

"And thanks for that too," he shook his head, "for making my sacrifice completely meaningless by letting Zelena run free to murder and rape and watch Robin's darling little rape baby that she named after him grow up to marry some unnatural project of Hook's double getting raped by our son's mother-in-law. Thanks for all that shit that probably wouldn't have happened if you didn't stupidly try to close a time portal when you knew you'd just lost your magic by resuscitating with apparently some magic French-kissing type of CPR a useless killer that I can only assume you're into because you have some messed up rape fantasy after not getting therapy for all the child molestation shit."

Emma slapped him hard. "Fuck you, Neal!"

He laughed. "I wouldn't fuck you if it got me a free pass to Heaven, Emma. Here I thought magic making us meet, my being part of your life would ruin yours, so I let you go. Turns out it was all about you ruining mine."

He shrugged sadly and turned back to his trash pile. "I guess that's what I got for being stupid enough to use my father's dagger to make him kill some guy, even if the guy was a mass murderer. It was my fault he got fully enslaved to that thing, and he made me forget, you know? So I hated him, even though it was my fault. But he never blamed me. And I never got to see him, to tell them that I was sorry. Maybe he wouldn't have done a lot of the shit he has if I'd been able to see him when he was here."

Coldly, Neal accused, "But you just used him as your pass to get here. Threatened his wife to do it. Such a good person, you are, Emma. Was there even a part of your brain thinking 'why am I saying and doing these horrible things even when I don't have demons in my head?' Was it intentional to be so shitty, fucking him the moment you thought I was dead in my childhood prison? Making moon-eyes and flirting with Hook before giving me the least believable hug in the history of hugs before I never got to see my son again? Because you wouldn't let me even talk to him? Did you feel bad at all about not trying to save me the past, giving my father a complete bullshit reason and then doing a one-eighty and saving Hook for all the reasons you said it was absolutely wrong to try to save me? Tell me? I really want to know, Emma? Did you ever love me at all? Did you hate me that much that you'd leave me to die over and over and then give away everything that represented our love, including our son? TELL ME!"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Emma shouted, crying. "I don't know what I felt. I never had time to know what I felt! There was always shit happening that I had to fix!"

"Until there wasn't and then it was just more convenient not to, right?" Neal scoffed. "To keep living in the horror movie house married to the horror movie husband trying to pop out Rosemary's Baby."

"Shut up!" Emma snapped. "I lost my baby!"

"Yeah, and then you died," Neal shrugged. "Happens to a lot of people. A lot of times it's a great tragedy. In this case? No soul that gets another chance at life deserves the one it would have gotten with you and Captain Cockroach as parents. You were both selfish. And clearly skipped getting STD tests or didn't finish your antibiotics. Or just didn't care."

"I fucked up, okay!" Emma screamed. "I get it! I'm the reason my baby died! I thought I had true love, but it was all a lie, so magic took it out on my kid by taking an innocent heart. I don't even know if it was a boy or a girl! And, yes, part of me knew I wasn't trying to get pregnant for the right reasons, that I was just as selfish as Regina when she adopted Henry and that it was pushing Henry away! But I couldn't stop! I don't know why! I became someone that the me who came to Storybrooke would have hated. Someone that _you_ would have hated. Maybe I had to in order to get over you. Which is a shitty excuse, okay? But we never got a chance. Fate or whatever always got in the way. I had to let you go. I had to find a way to let you go and not think about all the 'what ifs' I didn't actually have to?

"I could have tired True Love's kiss in the forest, but it didn't even cross my mind," Emma explained, shaking her head. "So maybe I didn't, anymore, love you enough. Maybe I was selfish in the past, after a crazy romantic adventure with a guy who didn't really know me. I never had to be myself again. You were the only person who knew _Emma._ Not the savior or the princess or even the mom. I could be Mrs. Jones instead. Mrs. Jones who didn't care so much, who wasn't always afraid of being alone. I could put on ugly dresses and floral shit to please my mom and treat people I arrested like shit so Hook could think that's what good guys do, that he could be a good guy too without having to change. Maybe I didn't want him to. Maybe I wanted him to treat me like shit because I thought I deserved it for failing you and Graham and so many others, I don't know. Maybe I wanted to be reduced to a prize he won who needed to cling to him. It's not like I've had more than a few hours here to reflect on my life choices that led me here."

"Well, the hours won't fly by, believe me," Neal said, going back to fixing his boxes and blankets.

"You... this is where you live?" Emma asked.

"I enslaved the Dark One. I willingly helped resurrect it," Neal reminded. "Doesn't get you the nice digs in The Underworld."

"But... but you were a good person, Neal," Emma argued. "I mean, after the jewelry theft stuff. You did good things. You lived a good life."

"Yeah, well, take up instituting a more accurate karma policy with Ares if you see him," Neal shrugged. "But some good deeds can't offset really bad ones, Emma. Anyone who operates by the Dark Vader philosophy of redemption doesn't get redemption. You can't do horrific shit for years and then make one grand sacrifice and be a hero who gets to be a happy Force ghost hanging out with your dead ghosty pals. But that seems to be the current belief with your family-at least where it comes to anyone who flatters them and wants to be part of their hero gang where they make all the decisions and everyone else can suck it. "

Grimacing, he told her, "I didn't. My father didn't. I told the truth. I didn't drink the Kool Aid. So 'I will always find you', that motto didn't apply to me. But when it was you and the family-member-murdering pirate? Sure. He's prettier. He'd marry you and give 'em legitimate heirs and look handsome hanging off your arm at some ball while they ignored that you looked like your soul had been sucked out and replaced by a zombie."

Neal gave a hollow laugh, continuing as he worked to fix his hovel, "I get it. I just didn't think you'd be as shallow and selfish as they are, Emma. I thought how you grew up would be stronger than the shallow gene pool you came from. But I guess neither of us could escape that, huh? We ended up no better than the people who abandoned us, ended up abandoning each other and our kid. But at least I said I was sorry and tried to make it up to you and Henry. You never even came back with him to my grave. You just gave him that keychain and waved good-bye, and went home to have replacement baby-making sex with your grandfather's killer. Pretty sure that's worse than proposing to your grandfather's crazy cult follower or even turning down the marriage proposal of a flying monkey."

Neal shook his head sadly. "I miss that Emma. The one who laughed about stupid shit like that. The one that really smiled. You stopped doing that. Just plastered on the fake grin and the dumb blonde girlie titter that you used to lift wallets. And everyone just bought it. Or maybe they were lying to themselves that you were that good an actress so they could believe I was just some poor sap, some stepping stone on your path to your one true love who had to be sacrificed like every first love instead of just breaking up and finding new people like normal relationships in the normal world."

"I am sorry. And whatever you think happened in Neverland, I didn't sleep with Killian while looking for our son," Emma told him, at a loss to come up with anything else.

"I wish I believed you. I didn't want to believe his bragging then or just blame it on pixie dust making you stupid and horny. It does that. But you didn't stop there. You left my body in the woods and flirted with him at my fucking funeral," Neal replied, settling into his somewhat smashed hovel. "Now would you please go? It's late and I have to pull a double shift starting in the morning."

It was already morning. Going on three AM. Emma didn't ask what Neal's job was here. She just nodded and went back to her dented 1980s patrol car, drove to the address from her file that just happened to be her mother's old apartment, and let herself in... through the still completely broken off door.

The apartment was... well... a shithole. What wasn't originally damaged by the way The Underworld damaged everything and then further destroyed by Cerberus had clearly been looted and used for elicit activities that probably got one double shifts. There was graffiti on the brick walls that included a drawing of a penis and crack pipes in the dead potted plants.

The refrigerator still worked at least.. .though the only thing in it was Diet Tab, TV dinners, and expired Lunchables, things she'd been forced to eat as a child until they literally made her sick.

Clearly one of the best punishments here was making dead people still somehow be hungry but only be given their least favorite foods ...or their favorite ones completely burned.

Emma felt too drained to cry anymore, to cry as much as she probably needed to that added up to the tears equivalent of all the paperwork she hadn't done over the years. But she had to be at work early too, at six, to feed the guy in the jail cell and endure more of his one man show about her sex life.

So she forced herself to eat a TV diner that took forever to cook in the ancient low-voltage microwave and then curled up on the small couch in the kitchen because all the mattresses had been stolen.

This was not how she'd pictured things would go if she died.

She'd thought about that when she was having those savior nightmares and assumed she was good, good enough that she'd wake up in some field of Middlemists and all the people she'd lost would be there to greet her with her hugs, and she'd be sad for the people left behind, but assured that she'd left them with the best she could offer, the best chance at happiness.

But it turned out that was all a self-made delusion because she hadn't wanted to face all the fuck-ups in her life. She'd happily bought into her parents' kind of optimism that bordered on a mental illness and focused everything on saving Killian Jones, saving his soul, for all the ones she'd failed. But in the process, it seemed, she'd neglected all of the people and relationships that really mattered. And that must have been the final trial that she'd failed. Zeus had used Hades' plan as part of a real test, to see if she deserved to be free of her fate, her destiny. She'd failed and accumulated demerits that included secrets and lies in a marriage that was pretty much found on them and called trust and honesty.

She felt stupid and broken. How _had_ she gotten so fucked up? Was it something in her childhood or a conscious choice to take the bountyhunter act to a new level of stupidity by reinventing herself not as a badass loner but as a clingy damsel that matched up with every Disney movie princess she watched as a child and utterly hated for being useless, man-pleasing doormats?

She'd become a doormat.

She now lived in a burned-out dump that didn't even have one.

And Henry was maybe going to die for some kid that maybe even wasn't his for a true love based on a lie and temporal paradoxes and that Cinderella hoe was apparently also Henry's biological cousin just in another universe because she was related to that world's Eva. So now Emma had 'sanctioning incest' on her list of infractions after 'committing quasi-incest by coveting thy son's grandmother's dick holster'.

Feeling more pitiful and pathetic than her first night in jail after Neal left her, Emma pulled a stained blanket around her and tried to will herself to go to sleep over the loud thumping of someone playing the worst remix ever.

… _I know you'd like to think your shit don't stink_

 _She'd been drinking too much eggnog-_

 _But lean a little bit closer-_

 _And we begged her not to go-_

 _See that roses really smell like poo-poo-oo-_

 _But she forgot her medication-_

 _Yeah, roses really smell like poo-poo-oo-_

 _And she staggered out the door into the snow..._

 **\- probably the end -**

* * *

 **AN:** The songs, as you may know, are "Roses" by OutKast and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" by Patsy & Elmo. That bit was inspired by _The Good Place_ 's demons being apparently obsessed with doing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" party remixes.


End file.
